By Rick Jex
As K-12 schools in California begin shifting to a new model of learning that is heavily reliant upon the Internet, this places pressures on IT directors to develop methods that ensure equal Internet access for all. By properly designing a network utilizing traditional VLANs (virtual local area network), and QOS (quality of service) as well as with smart networking tools like NetEqualizer from AP Connections, a school district can prioritize their network traffic based on a plethora of policies.
Traditionally IT networks in K-12 schools have been straightforward with one network, consisting of district owned staff computers, student computers and district servers. What the EDTech community has seen over the past 12 years is an emergence of wireless-access points and the transition from desktops to laptops for students and teachers. Within the past four years specifically, K-12 schools have been and continue to be undergoing a transition, from wired networks to wireless Internet access, anywhere, anytime on any device. With this transition, it is imperative that district administrators place a priority on adequately staffing an IT department with skilled IT professionals and an adequate budget to support all aspects of technology, not just purchasing laptops and throwing them into classrooms with little forethought to infrastructure and implementation. Likewise, IT administrators need to take a close look at their infrastructure and determine how they are going to handle the ever-increasing load on their networks; how they plan to protect critical infrastructure communications, data and privacy, all while ensuring there is enough Internet bandwidth for every student, teacher, administrator and device.
Regardless of how great a teacher or librarian’s classroom management is there will always be a little Johnny in the back of the library streaming YouTube of the latest music video. They may be working in another tab actively engaged on their lesson, but that music video may very well be eating bandwidth that the teacher next door needs to have for their lesson, causing that teacher’s pages to load slow, videos to buffer and programs not to load correctly. Multiply this by a few different students around the district and suddenly the entire Internet within that district comes to a crawl and legitimate lessons, teaching and learning all become disrupted.
For many reasons, traditional VLANs and QOS are great. It allows you to separate out your staff, students, VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) and now BYOD (bring your own device) networks and give the traffic different priorities, such as VOIP highest, then staff, students and BYOD networks; along with the ability to set up simple access lists that prevent communication from one virtual network to another. This traffic segregation ensures personal student devices do not interact with district owned servers, severely reducing the risk of data compromise by viruses and other malware that may be on personal devices.
Although VLANs and QOS solve the issue of traffic separation and priority for security and reliability, separating out the network traffic does not solve the problem of equalizing the Internet bandwidth, it only helps for security and reliability. One potential solution I discovered during my research and planning for BYOD implementation is a product known as NetEqualizer from AP Connections. This product takes it one-step further by sitting as a bridge between your Internet connection and your main network, actively monitoring all Internet traffic. When your Internet bandwidth reaches a specific threshold, say 85 percent utilization, the device already knows who is using the most bandwidth and automatically begins throttling those users down based on a set of pre-defined policies determined by the Network Administrator. Because the policies are customizable, a different set of policies can be set for different users, VLANs and specific devices. For example, the device can be configured to throttle down students who are utilizing an excessive amount of bandwidth but not throttle down teachers who may be streaming videos. Therefore, Internet availability and reliable speeds would be improved for active users as well as provide new Internet connections to other potential users.
Nevertheless, in order for any of this to happen, it requires district leadership placing a higher priority on obtaining an adequately skilled and staffed information technology department that is not consistently reactive, but proactive; an IT department that is able to think, design and implement new concepts as technology and education become more fused together.
About The Author
Rick Jex is the director of information technology at Riverdale Joint Unified School District and can be reached at rjex@rjusd.edu.
DataBus Online 